Documents Dauth, Wolfgang 11 results

"The German economy exhibits rising service and declining manufacturing employment. But this decline is much sharper in import-competing than in export-oriented branches. We first document the individual-level job transitions behind those trends. They are not driven by manufacturing workers who smoothly switch to services. The observed shifts are entirely due to young entrants and returnees from non-employment. We then investigate if rising trade with China and Eastern Europe causally affected those labor flows. Exploiting variation across industries and regions, we find that globalization did not speed up the manufacturing decline in Germany. It even retained those jobs in the economy. "

"We estimate the effect of industrial robots on employment, wages, and the composition of jobs in German labor markets between 1994 and 2014. We find that the adoption of industrial robots had no effect on total employment in local labor markets specializing in industries with high robot usage. Robot adoption led to job losses in manufacturing that were offset by gains in the business service sector. We analyze the impact on individual workers and find that robot adoption has not increased the risk of displacement for incumbent manufacturing workers. They stay with their original employer, and many workers adjust by switching occupations at their original workplace. The loss of manufacturing jobs is solely driven by fewer new jobs for young labor market entrants. Moreover, we find that, in regions with higher exposure to automation, labor productivity increases while the labor share in total income declines."

"This paper analyzes the evolution of geographical concentration in the West German manufacturing, service, and knowledge-intensive sectors over a time period of 30 years. Drawing on detailed plant data of 187 industries from 1980 to 2010, we observe substantial concentration that is highest in manufacturing. Over time, there is a trend of deconcentration encompassing all economic activity. These patterns remain stable when accounting for both various sectoral and regional levels of aggregation and spatial dependencies between neighbouring regions. Investigating the role of plant births, expansions, contractions, and closures for the decline of concentration, we show that the underlying mechanisms differ across sectors. The dispersion of manufacturing industries is driven by contracting and closing plants within industrial agglomerations, whereas the dispersion of the service sector is fostered by the creation of new plants outside industrial agglomerations."

"The labor markets of most industrialized countries are polarized. This means that employment has grown in jobs at the upper and lower tails of the wage distribution, while employment in the middle part of the distribution has stagnated or declined. However, there exists no measure that allows a quantitative comparison across different labor markets as yet. I propose a straightforward way to measure the actual magnitude of job polarization. To demonstrate its application, I use this measure to compare polarization across German local labor markets. Job polarization almost exclusively occurs in urban areas where the hypothesis of routine biased technological change is most likely to prevail."

"We analyze how globalization has affected the sectoral anatomy of regional growth in Germany over the period 1978-2008. The aggregate German economy is characterized by a secular decline of manufacturing and a rise of modern service industries. This trend– also known as Petty's law – is not uniform across space, however. Some regions exhibit it at an even accelerated pace, while other regions have reinforced their manufacturing specializations. We first categorize all German regions into one of three groups, with "protrend", "anti-trend" or "featureless" growth. Afterwards we propose an explanation why a particular region ended up in one of those groups: We argue that the regional profiles of growth and change are systematically related to the initial sizes, and the import and export exposures of the local manufacturing sectors."

"This paper contributes to the literature on macroeconometric evaluation of active labour market policies (ALMP) by considering the regional effects on both the matching process and the job-seeker rate. We use an unique new data set on all Austrian job-seekers between 2001 to 2007 and apply GMM and Quasi-ML estimators to take into account both the simultaneity of ALMP and spatial interrelations between employment office districts. The results indicate that job schemes in the non-profit sector, wage subsidies, and apprenticeships cause particularly favourable effects on the regional matching function and the job-seeker rate."

"The wage curve identified by Blanchflower and Oswald (1994) postulates that the wage level is a decreasing function of the regional unemployment rate. In testing this hypothesis, most empirical studies have not taken into account that differences in the institutional framework may have an impact on the existence (or the slope) of a wage curve. Using a large-scale linked employer-employee data set for western Germany, this paper provides a first test of the relevance of different bargaining regimes and of works councils for the existence of a wage curve. In pooled regressions for the period 1998 to 2006 as well as in worker-level or plant-level fixed-effects estimations we obtain evidence for a wage curve for plants with a collective bargaining agreement at firm level. The point estimates for this group of plants are close to the -0.1 elasticity of wages with respect to unemployment postulated by Blanchflower and Oswald. In this regime, we also find that works councils dampen the adjustment of wages to the regional unemployment situation. In the other regimes of plants that either do not make use of collective contracts or apply sectoral agreements, we do not find a wage curve."

"We study the impact of rising robot exposure on the careers of individual manufacturing workers, and the equilibrium impact across industries and local labor markets in Germany. We find no evidence that robots cause total job losses, but they do affect the composition of aggregate employment. Every robot destroys two manufacturing jobs. This accounts for almost 23 percent of the overall decline of manufacturing employment in Germany over the period 1994 - 2014, roughly 275,000 jobs. But this loss was fully offset by additional jobs in the service sector. Moreover, robots have not raised the displacement risk for incumbent manufacturing workers. Quite in contrast, more robot exposed workers are even more likely to remain employed in their original workplace, though not necessarily performing the same tasks, and the aggregate manufacturing decline is solely driven by fewer new jobs for young labor market entrants. This enhanced job stability for insiders comes at the cost of lower wages. The negative impact of robots on individual earnings arises mainly for mediumskilled workers in machine-operating occupations, while high-skilled managers gain. In the aggregate, robots raise labor productivity but not wages. Thereby they contribute to the decline of the labor income share."

"This paper analyses how differences in the degree of occupational routine-intensity affect the costs of job loss. We use worker-level data on mass layoffs in Germany between 1980 and 2010 and provide causal evidence that workers who used to be employed in more routine-intensive occupa-tions suffer larger and more persistent earnings losses after the mass layoff. Furthermore, we are able to show that, at least initially, earnings losses are primarily due to a reduction in the number of days in employment, suggesting that routine-intensive workers face considerable frictions in the adjustment to job loss. Conditional on finding a new job, routine-intensive workers are more likely to change their occupations but end up systematically in the lower end of their new occupa-tion's wage distribution."

""Durch den Angriffskrieg Russlands wurden mehrere Millionen Menschen zur Flucht aus der Ukraine gezwungen. Auch nach Deutschland sind mehr als 260.000 Geflüchtete bis zum 28. März 2022 eingereist. Für jene Personen, die nicht privat in Familien oder bei Bekannten untergebracht und versorgt werden können, stellt sich die Frage, wie diese über das Bundesgebiet und auf die Landkreise und kreisfreien Städte verteilt werden sollten. Die Verteilung über die Länder erfolgt gegenwärtig nach dem so genannten Königsteiner Schlüssel, d.h. nach Bevölkerung und Steueraufkommen. Die Verteilung innerhalb der Länder erfolgt häufig nach Bevölkerung und der Verfügbarkeit von Wohnraum. In der Vergangenheit wurden durch diese Verteilungsmechanismen die Geflüchteten überdurchschnittlich auf strukturschwache Regionen mit hohen Arbeitslosenquoten verteilt. Das hat die Integrationschancen in den Arbeitsmarkt nachhaltig beeinträchtigt. Empirische Studien zeigen, dass insbesondere die Situation am lokalen Arbeitsmarkt auch langfristig einen erheblichen Einfluss auf den Integrationserfolg hat. Insofern ist die Ausgangsverteilung über die Regionen für den Integrationserfolg zentral. Wir plädieren dafür, dass die Umverteilung von Geflüchteten auf jene Personen beschränkt wird, die auf die öffentliche Versorgung mit Wohnraum angewiesen ist. Zudem sollten Präferenzen der Geflüchteten nach Kriterien wie Familienbindungen und anderen Netzwerken berücksichtigt werden. Das Vorhandensein von derartigen Bindungen und Netzwerken hat einen nachweisbaren Einfluss auf den Integrationserfolg. Kommt es zu einer Umverteilung, sollten Integrationskriterien berücksichtigt werden. In diesem Beitrag erörtern wir verschiedene Aspekte, die für die Integration von Migrantinnen und Migranten relevant sind und hinsichtlich derer es starke Unterschiede zwischen den Regionen gibt: die Aufnahmefähigkeit des Arbeitsmarktes, die Aufnahmefähigkeit von Kinderbetreuungsangeboten und die Verfügbarkeit von Wohnraum. Als Indikator für die Verfügbarkeit von Wohnraum verwenden wir das Mietniveau, das die Knappheiten auf dem Wohnungsmarkt abbildet und somit auch ein guter Indikator für die Verfügbarkeit von Wohnraum sein sollte. Darauf aufbauend schlagen wir einen neuen Verteilungsschlüssel vor, der sich neben dem Bevölkerungsumfang nach der regionalen Arbeitsmarktlage, dem Angebot an Kinderbetreuungseinrichtungen und den Mietkosten richtet. Würden die Geflüchteten nach diesem Schlüssel umverteilt werden, wäre eine Steigerung der Beschäftigungswahrscheinlichkeit von 5 bis 10 Prozent gegenüber den gegenwärtig angewandten Verteilungsschlüsseln zu erwarten. Dem steht ein Anstieg der durchschnittlichen Wohnkosten in den Kreisen und kreisfreien Städten um 4 Prozent gegenüber. Diese höheren Kosten für die Unterkunft, die zu Beginn des Integrationsprozesses aufgewendet werden müssen, können sich aber langfristig auszahlen, da die Beschäftigungschancen im Vergleich zu einer Verteilung über der Königsteiner Schlüssel oder bei einer Gleichverteilung über die Bevölkerung deutlich ansteigen würden. Bei einer noch stärkeren regionalen Konzentration könnten die Beschäftigungschancen noch deutlich stärker gesteigert werden."